GROUP 1

Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)

Common Space in Feminist Theories

Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist some areas of
commonality. This list is excerpted from Tyson:

1. Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and

psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which they are kept so
2. In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined
only by her difference from male norms and values
3. All of western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for
example, in the biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world
4. While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender
(masculine or feminine)
5. All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate
goal to change the world by prompting gender equality
6. Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience,
including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously
aware of these issues or not (91).

Feminist criticism has, in many ways, followed what some theorists call the three waves of
feminism:

1. First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary Wollstonecraft (A
Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities between the sexes.
Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the women's
suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing
of the Nineteenth Amendment
2. Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal working
conditions necessary in America during World War II, movements such as the National
Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist political activism.
Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le deuxime sexe, 1972) and Elaine Showalter
established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories dove-tailed with
the American Civil Rights movement
3. Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived essentialist (over
generalized, over simplified) ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class focus of
second wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-structural and
contemporary gender and race theories (see below) to expand on marginalized
populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to "...reconcile it [feminism]
with the concerns of the black community...[and] the survival and wholeness of her
people, men and women both, and for the promotion of dialog and community as well
 as for the valorization of women and of all the varieties of work women perform" (Tyson
97).

Typical questions:

How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?

What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming
male/female roles)?
How are male and female roles defined?
What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
How do characters embody these traits?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change
others reactions to them?
What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or
psychologically) of patriarchy?
What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting
patriarchy?
What does the work say about women's creativity?
What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us
about the operation of patriarchy?
What role the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition?
(Tyson)

Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this
theory:

Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792

Simone de Beauvoir - Le deuxime sexe, 1972
Julia Kristeva - About Chinese Women, 1977
Elaine Showalter - A Literature of Their Own, 1977; "Toward a Feminist Poetics," 1979
Deborah E. McDowell - "New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism," 1980
Alice Walker - In Search of Our Mother's Gardens, 1983
Lillian S. Robinson - "Treason out Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon," 1983
Camile Paglia - Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, 1990

Feminist Theory

What unites the various kinds of feminist literary theory is not so much a specific technique of
criticism but a common goal: to raise awareness of womens roles in all aspects of literary
production (as writers, as characters in literature, as readers etc.) and to reveal the extent of
male dominance in all of these aspects. Womens attempts to resist the dominance of a
patriarchal society have a long history but the actual term feminism seems not to have come
into English usage until the 1890s. In general, feminist criticism has also attempted to show that
literary criticism and theory themselves have been dominated by male concerns. In fact, some
feminists have reacted against all theory as an essentially male-dominated sphere. Theory, for
them, is associated with the traditional male/ female binary opposition: theory being essentially
in the male domain and embracing all that is impersonal and would-be objective. Against this,
they have placed the female world of subjectivity and primal experience.There is general
agreement among most authors that, apart from recent developments, feminist theory can be
divided into two major stages:The First Wave and The Second Wave. 91 Literary Theory 23/5/06
8:40 am Page 91

The First Wave

The earlier phase of modern feminist theory was very much influenced by the social and
economic reforms brought about by the Womens Rights and Suffrage movements.Two writers
in particular stand out in this period for first raising many of the issues which would continue to
preoccupy later feminists:Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir.

Virginia Woolf (18821941)

Apart from her novels, Virginia Woolf also wrote two works which contributed to feminist
theory:A Room with a View (1927), and Three Guineas (1938). In the former, Woolf considered
especially the social situation of women as writers and, in the latter, she explored the
dominance of the major professions by men. In the first work she argued that womens writing
should explore female experience and not just draw comparisons with the situation in society
of men. Woolf was also one of the earliest writers to stress that gender is not predetermined
but is a social construct and, as such, can be changed. However, she did not want to encourage
a direct confrontation between female and male concerns and preferred to try to find some
kind of balance of power between the two. If women were to develop their artistic abilities to
the full, she felt it was necessary to establish social and economic equality with men. DAVID
CARTER 92 Literary Theory 23/5/06 8:40 am Page 92

II. Simone de Beauvoir

(19081986) Simone de Beauvoir is famous not only as a feminist but as the life-long partner of
the French philosopher JeanPaul Sartre. She was a very active fighter for womens rights and a
supporter of abortion. Her most influential book is, without doubt, The Second Sex (1949). In
this work, she outlined the differences between the interests of men and women and attacked
various forms of male dominance over women. Already in the Bible and throughout history
Woman was always regarded as the Other. Man dominated in all influential cultural fields,
including law, religion, philosophy, science, literature and the other arts. She also clearly
distinguished between sex and gender, and wrote (famously) One is not born, but rather
becomes, a woman. She demanded freedom for women from being distinguished on the basis
of biology and rejected the whole notion of femininity, which she regarded as a male
projection.

The Second Wave

The second wave of feminist theory was very much influenced by the various liberationist
movements, especially in America, in the 1960s. Its central concern was sexual difference. The
theorists of this second wave criticised especially the argument that women were made
inferior by virtues of their biological difference to men. Some feminist critics, on the other
hand, celebrated the biological difference and considered it a source of positive values which
women could nurture, both in their everyday lives 93 LITERARY THEORY Literary Theory
23/5/06 8:40 am Page 93 and in works of art and literature.Another area of debate has been
the question of whether white women and men perceive the world in the same ways, and
differently to black women. Another much disputed question has been whether there exists a
specifically female language. This has arisen from the sense that one reason for the oppression
of women has been the male dominance of language itself. Some feminists have decided not to
challenge dominance directly but rather to celebrate all that has been traditionally identified as
the polar opposite of maleness. All that is disruptive, chaotic and subversive is seen as female,
in a positive, creative sense, in contrast to the restrictive, ordering and defining obsessions of
maleness.

I. Kate Millett (1934)

Kate Milletts book Sexual Politics (1969) was probably the most influential feminist work of its
period. Her central argument is that the main cause of the oppression of women is ideology.
Patriarchy is all-pervasive and treats females universally as inferior. In both public and private
life the female is subordinate. Millett also distinguishes very clearly between sex (biological
characteristics) and gender (culturally acquired identity). The interaction of domination and
subordination in all relations between men and women is what she calls sexual politics. Millett
also reveals a special interest in literature, arguing that the very structure of narrative has been
shaped by male ideology. Male purposiveness and goal-seeking dominate the structure of most
literature.To show up the extent to which the perspectives in most works are those of the
DAVID CARTER 94 Literary Theory 23/5/06 8:40 am Page 94 men, she deliberately provides
readings of famous works of literature from a womans perspective. However, she reveals a
misconceived view of homosexuality in literature (especially in the works of Jean Genet), which
she could only comprehend as a kind of metaphor for subjection of the female.

II. Sandra Gilbert (1936)

and Susan Guber (1944) Gilbert and Gubers The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) is famous for
its exploration of certain female stereotypes in literature, especially those of the angel and
the monster. The title refers to the mad wife whom Rochester has locked in the attic in
Charlotte Bronts Jane Eyre. They have been criticised for identifying many examples of
patriarchal dominance without providing a thorough criticism of it.

III. Elaine Showalter (1941)

One of the most influential books of The Second Wave is Elaine Showalters A Literature of
their Own (1977), which provides a literary history of women writers. It outlines a feminist
critique of literature for women readers as well as identifying crucial women writers. She
coined the term gynocriticism for her mode of analysing the works of women writers. She also
argues for a profound difference between the writing of women and that of men and
delineates a whole tradition of womens writing neglected by male critics. She divides this
tradition into three phases. 95 LITERARY THEORY Literary Theory 23/5/06 8:40 am Page 95 The
first phase was from about 1840 to 1880, and she refers to it as the feminine phase. It
includes writers such as George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. Female writers in this phase
internalised and respected the dominant male perspective, which required that women
authors remained strictly in their socially acceptable place. From this perspective, it is
significant that Mary Anne Evans found it necessary to adopt the male pen name of George
Eliot. The Second Phase, the feminist phase, from 1880 to 1920 included radical feminist
writers who protested against male values, such as Olive Schreiner and Elizabeth Robins. The
Third Phase, which she describes as the female phase, developed the notion of specifically
female writing. Rebecca West and Katherine Mansfield exemplify this phase.

IV. Julia Kristeva (1941)

The central ideas of Julia Kristeva have already been outlined in relation to the influence of
Lacanian psychoanalysis on her work. She considered Lacans symbolic stage in a childs
development to be the main root of male dominance. When a child learns language, it also
recognises principles of order, law and rationality associated with a patriarchal society. Lacans
pre-Oedipal imaginary stage is referred to by Kristeva as semiotic, and literature, especially
poetry, can tap the rhythms and drives of this stage.The pre-Oedipal stage is also associated
very closely with the body of the mother.When the male child enters the symbolic order,
however, the child identifies with the father. The female child is identified with pre-Oedipal,
DAVID CARTER 96 Literary Theory 23/5/06 8:40 am Page 96 pre-discursive incoherence, and is
seen as a threat to the rational order. As has been already explained, Kristeva advocates a kind
of anarchic liberation, in which poetic and political become interchangeable.

V. Helne Cixous (1937)

Helne Cixous essay, The Laugh of the Medusa (1976), argues for a positive representation of
femininity in womens writing. Her mode of writing is often poetic rather than rational: Write
yourself.Your body must be heard.There is a paradox at the heart of Cixous theory in that she
rejects theory itself:this practice can never be theorized, enclosed, encoded which doesnt
mean that it doesnt exist. Her notion of a specific criture fminine is intended to subvert the
symbolic rational masculine language. Like Julia Kristeva, she also links criture fminine to
Lacans pre-Oedipal imaginary phase. She advocates also what she refers to as the other
bisexuality, which actively encourages and relishes sexual differences. It must be said that her
writing is full of contradictions: rejecting a biological account of the female but nevertheless
celebrating the female body; including binary oppositions but denying their importance;
encouraging a specifically female form of writing but celebrating pre-linguistic, non-verbal
experience. It is a position which one is tempted to describe as full of much sound and fury but
signifying, in both Saussurean and Shakespearean senses, nothing

VI. Luce Irigaray (1932)

Luce Irigaray is especially critical of Freuds view of women. In Spculum de lautre femme
(1974) she argues that Freuds penis envy envisages women as not really existing at all
independently but only as negative mirror images of men. Male perception is clearly associated
with sight (observation, analysis, aesthetics etc), but women gain pleasure from physical
contact.The eroticism of women is fundamentally different to that of men. For Irigaray, all this
implies that women should celebrate their completely different nature to men, their otherness.
Only in this way can they overcome the traditional male-dominated perception of women.

VII. Ruth Robbins

The general concern of Marxist Feminism is to reveal the double oppression of women, both by
the capitalist system and by sexuality within the home, and to explain the relationships
between the two. The ideas of Ruth Robbins provide a good example of the combination of
feminist concerns and Marxist principles. In Literary Feminisms (2000), she advocates a Marxist
feminism which explains the material conditions of real peoples lives, how conditions such as
poverty and undereducation produce different signifiying systems than works produced in
conditions of privilege and educational plenty.